1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a grinding roller that grinds a surface of a toner image-side rotary member that comes into contact with an unfixed toner image in a fixing device, a fixing device including the grinding roller, and an image forming apparatus including the fixing device.
2. Related Art
An electrophotographic image forming apparatus, such as a laser printer or a color image copier, normally forms an electrostatic latent image on the basis of image data input from a personal computer, an image input device, or the like, develops the electrostatic latent image with toner to form a toner image, transfers the toner image onto a recording medium such as a sheet, and fixes the transferred toner image on the recording medium with heat and pressure by using a fixing device.
The fixing device usually includes a pair of rotary fixing members that rotate while being pressed against each other to form an area of contact, and heat and press the recording medium carrying the unfixed toner image and fed to the area of contact, to thereby fix the unfixed toner image on the recording medium. The pair of rotary fixing members includes a toner image-side rotary member that comes into contact with the unfixed toner image, such as a fixing belt, for example.
If recording media of a given size are continuously fed through the pair of rotary fixing members (i.e., through the area of contact of the pair of rotary fixing members), streaks may be formed on portions of the rotary fixing members in contact with side edges of the recording media because the edges of the recording media may have so-called burrs from a cutting process in the manufacture of the recording media, and the streaks are in most cases due to damage on the surfaces of the rotary fixing members caused by such burrs. If the streaks are formed on the surface of the toner image-side rotary member, and if a recording medium wider than the recording media having caused the streaks is subjected to a fixing process using the toner image-side rotary member, the streaks may be transferred to the toner image on the wide recording medium, thereby degrading the image quality.
To address the above-described issue, the fixing device may include a grinding roller that grinds the surface of the toner image-side rotary member.
From the viewpoint of productivity in image formation of the image forming apparatus, it is desirable to reduce the grinding time of the grinding roller as much as possible. As a method for reducing the grinding time, it is conceivable to increase the particles size of the abrasive grains forming the grinding surface on the outer circumferential surface of the grinding roller to improve the grinding performance per unit time of the grinding roller having such a grinding surface. The increase in particle size of the abrasive grains forming the grinding surface, however, results in a reduction in glossiness of the ground surface of the rotary fixing member and thus a reduction in glossiness of the fixed toner image.